Robert Dinerstein is professor of law,
Director of the clinical program (1988-96 and 2008-present),
Associate Dean for Experiential Education (2012-present) and
Director of the
Disability Rights Law Clinic (2005-present) at American
University's Washington College of Law, where he has taught
since 1983. He was the law school's associate dean for academic
affairs from 1997-2004. He specializes in the fields of clinical
education and disability law, especially mental disabilities law
(including issues of consent/choice, capacity and guardianship),
the Americans with Disabilities Act,
Civil Rights of
Institutionalized Persons Act, the
UN Convention on the Rights
of Persons with Disabilities, legal representation of clients
with mental disabilities, the interaction between disability and
the criminal justice system, and disability and international
human rights.

Dinerstein is the author/editor of two books. He is co-editor
and co-author, with Stanley Herr and Joan O’Sullivan, of A GUIDE
TO CONSENT (AAMR, 1999). In the area of legal education and
lawyering, he is co-author, with Ellmann, Gunning, Kruse and
Shalleck, of LAWYERS AND CLIENTS: CRITICAL ISSUES IN
INTERVIEWING AND COUNSELING (Thomson West 2009). He has written
extensively on issues of clinical pedagogy and lawyering, in
particular, client-centered counseling. He has also written and
presented on the US Department of Justice’s record of
enforcement of the rights of persons with disabilities under
several administrations.

Dinerstein was appointed by President Clinton in 1994 to
serve on the President's Committee on Mental Retardation (now
called the President’s Committee on People with Intellectual
Disabilities), on which he served until 2001. Internationally,
he has consulted for the World Health Organization (Ghana and
Malawi) and the Open Society Foundations (Ghana) regarding the
revision of mental health laws and was a signatory to the
Montreal Declaration on Intellectual Disabilities, adopted in
Montreal, Canada in October 2004. He also has consulted with the
Open Society Foundations regarding disability rights clinics and
disability rights curricula in Latin America and Southern Africa
Domestically, he has consulted for the Ford Foundation, Public
Welfare Foundation and the US Department of Health and Human
Services and the US Department of Education on issues related to
legal services, disability law and poverty law. With Hadar
Harris, he is co-principal investigator for the Disability and
Human Rights Fellows program, which receives support from the
Open Society Foundations.

Prior to joining AU, Dinerstein worked as an attorney in the
U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, Special
Litigation Section, where he handled federal court cases on the
rights of people in institutions for people with psychosocial
disabilities, people with intellectual disabilities and
juveniles. In addition to the Disability Rights Law Clinic,
which he founded (and which handles special education,
admission/commitment of people with intellectual disabilities,
guardianship, Department of Mental Health grievances, ADA, and
other cases), he teaches a seminar on law and disability and has
taught interviewing and counseling, legal ethics, the supervised
externship seminar, and the criminal justice clinic (which he
directed from 1989-1995).

Dinerstein is actively involved in organizations related to
legal education nationally. He was a member (elected) of the
Council of the American Bar Association Section on Legal
Education and Admissions to the Bar (2006-2011), and previously
was on the section’s Standards Review Committee. He has been a
member of 17 ABA-AALS joint site inspection teams, chairing four
teams. Within the Association of American Law Schools, he was a
member of the membership review committee and has, among other
things, chaired the sections on clinical legal education, law
and community, disability law and law and mental disability law,
as well as the committees on clinical legal education, sections
and the annual meeting, and the planning committee for the 2006
clinical teachers’ conference. He has been a member of a number
of other planning committees, including for the AALS New
Teachers’ Conference.

Dinerstein currently sits on the boards of directors of the
Quality Trust for
Individuals with Disabilities, Inc. (founding board member &
president),
Equal Rights Center (president), and the New Hope Community,
Inc., and in the past has served on the boards of Washington
Legal Clinic for the Homeless, Inc. (founding board member,
1986-2015), Advocates for Justice and Education, the District of
Columbia Bar Board of Governors (elected; 2002-05), Society of
American Law Teachers (elected), Mental Disability Rights
International (founding board member; now called Disability
Rights International), Legal Counsel for the Elderly, and the
Maryland Disability Law Center. He also is a member of the
steering committee for the Jacobus tenBroek annual disability
law symposium sponsored by the National Federation of the Blind.

Among his many awards, Dinerstein has received the Paul G.
Hearne Award for Disability Rights (ABA, 2013); (with Shalleck)
the Egon Guttman Casebook Award (2011-12) for LAWYERS AND
CLIENTS; the William Pincus Award for his contributions to
clinical legal education (2010); American University Awards for
Scholar-Teacher of the Year (2013), Outstanding Teaching in a
Full-Time Appointment (2009) and Faculty-Administrator Award for
Outstanding Service to the University Community (2002); and the
Pro Bono Service Award from the International Human Rights Law
Group (1988; now called Global Rights).

He has an A.B. degree from Cornell University and a J.D.
degree from Yale Law School.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Selected Publications:

Robert Dinerstein, “Every Picture Tells a
Story, Don’t It?”: The Complex Role of Narratives in
Disability Law Cases, 15 Narrative: The Journal of the
Society for the Study of Narrative Literature 40 (Jan. 2007).

Robert Dinerstein,
Guardianship and Its Alternatives for Adults with Down
Syndrome (Ch. 11), in Adults With Down Syndrome
(Siegfried Pueschel, ed., Paul H. Brookes, Co., Inc. 2006).

Robert Dinerstein,
Laurie Powers & Steve Holmes, Self-Advocacy,
Self-Determination, and Social Freedom and Opportunity,
in National Goals and Research for People with
Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (K. Charles
Lakin & Ann Turnbul, eds., The ARC of the U.S. & Am. Assn. on
Mental Retardation 2005).

Robert Dinerstein,
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990: Progeny of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 31 Hum. Rights 10 (Summer
2004).

Robert Dinerstein,
Consent and Competency in the Lives of People with
Developmental Disabilities, National Academy for Equal
Justice for People with Developmental Disabilities (June
2004).

Robert Dinerstein, Guardianship and Surrogate
Decisionmaking for People with Developmental Disabilities in
the District of Columbia, in On the QT: Newsletter
for The Quality Trust for Individuals with Disabilities, Vol.
2 ( Fall/Winter 2003).

Robert Dinerstein is a professor of law at American
University’s Washington College of Law (WCL). He specializes in the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the rights of people with
intellectual disabilities (mental retardation) and mental illness,
disability laws in general, homelessness, civil rights, criminal justice,
lawyer-client issues, and clinical legal education. Prof. Dinerstein was the
law school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 1997-2004, and
previously directed WCL’s clinical program (1988-1996), nationally
recognized for its excellence. Currently, he is director of the law
school’s Disability Rights Law Clinic, in which law students under his
supervision represent individuals and families with disabilities in a number
of different legal settings.

Prof. Dinerstein was a member of the Clinton transition team in 1992 and
was appointed by President Clinton in 1994 to serve on the President’s
Committee on Mental Retardation (on which he served until 2001). Prior to
teaching at American University, he worked as an attorney in the U.S.
Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section,
where he handled federal court cases on the rights of people
institutionalized in mental hospitals, mental retardation and juvenile
institutions, prisons, and jails. In addition to serving as treasurer and
board member of the ERC, Prof. Dinerstein currently serves on the board of
directors of several organizations, including the Quality Trust for
Individuals with Disabilities, Inc. (president), Mental Disability Rights
International, and Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, Inc.
(treasurer). In the past, he has also served on the boards of the District
of Columbia Bar Board of Governors (2002-2005), Society of American Law
Teachers, Maryland Disability Law Center, Fair Employment Council of Greater
Washington, Legal Counsel for the Elderly, and D.C. Law Students in Court,
Inc.

Prof. Dinerstein has long been actively involved in national legal
education activities. He is an elected member (since 2006) of the Council
of the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions
to the Bar, and has served on important committees of the section (including
the Standards Review Committee) and the Association of American Law Schools
(AALS) (including the Membership Review Committee and Committee on Clinical
Legal Education), as well as serving as chair of the AALS Section on
Clinical Legal Education and chair of the 2006 AALS Clinical Teachers’
Conference.

Prof. Dinerstein has written numerous law review articles and chapters on
clinical legal education and disability rights, and is coauthor and coeditor
of A Guide to Consent (American Association on Mental Retardation, 1999),
which addresses issues of capacity and consent in the lives of people with
mental retardation. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Cornell
University.